Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

4. Department of Defense · Minor

Establish a funded electromagnetic spectrum operations recovery plan

Partially done

115 4. Department of Defense

“Establish a vigorous and sufficiently funded electromagnetic spectrum operations recovery plan to make up for more than 20 years of neglect of this mission area.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The funding limb moves; the plan limb does not. The FY 2027 R-1 carries four electromagnetic lines that rise sharply from the FY2026 enacted column to the FY2027 request: Air Force PE 0207039F **Cognitive Electromagnetic Warfare** $23,933K to $50,496K, PE 0207407F **Electromagnetic Battle Management** $17,693K to $45,322K, PE 0207439F **Electromagnetic Warfare Int Reprog** $38,639K to $73,523K, and Defense-Wide PE 0303153K **Defense Spectrum Organization** $20,174K to $49,466K - roughly a doubling to a tripling on each. That is the Quote's "sufficiently funded" limb advancing, and with the FY2026 NDAA's statutory structure it is what keeps this above `attempted`. The **recovery plan** limb is untouched by the exhibits. The FY 2027 Budget Request Overview Book names electromagnetic spectrum operations exactly once outside its acronym list, inside the Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance technology roadmap, and its dedicated electromagnetic-warfare paragraph lists platform survivability programs - Next Generation Jammer, EPAWSS, the F/A-18 Integrated Defensive Electronic Countermeasures System, CIRCM - rather than a recovery program. Money for the mission area, still no plan for it: `partial`.

  2. Partially done

    The FY2026 NDAA (P.L. 119-60) is where the structure appears: sec. 1681 broadens the Electromagnetic Spectrum Enterprise Operational Lead's functions (10 U.S.C. 500e) to cover evaluation of dynamic spectrum sharing tactics and to assess gaps in evaluation mechanisms; sec. 1682 adds 10 U.S.C. 500g, requiring the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to integrate offensive and defensive electronic warfare into Tier 1 and Tier 2 joint exercises for FY2026-2030 against a current electromagnetic order of battle; sec. 1683 requires an annual FFRDC review of the Joint Electromagnetic Battle Management software program; and sec. 227 requires a joint range complex capable of electromagnetic spectrum operations and electromagnetic warfare training, whose design must align with the Department's most recent Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy. Several statutory pieces of a recovery program, not a funded recovery plan.

  3. Partially done

    The reconciliation act (P.L. 119-21) funds spectrum work but no plan: sec. 20005(10) $25,000,000 to test simultaneous transmit and receive technology for military spectrum agility, sec. 20005(13) $40,000,000 for alternative positioning and navigation technology to enable operations in contested electromagnetic environments, and sec. 20004(36) $170,000,000 for an advanced radar depot for repair, testing and production of radar and electronic warfare systems.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

The instrument for a “recovery plan” would be a departmental strategy document.

  • The earlier note that media.defense.gov refused us was wrong, and the document is still not Evidence — for a different reason (2026-09-06). The Department’s Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy, referenced by name in FY2026 NDAA sec. 227, opens to a normal browser request at https://media.defense.gov/2020/Oct/29/2002525927/-1/-1/0/electromagnetic_spectrum_superiority_strategy.pdf — 28 pages, PDF title “DoD Electromagnetic Spectrum Superiority Strategy 2020”, created 2020-10-09. It is pre-window: the evidence gate admits nothing dated before 2025-01-20, so what this is, is background — the plan that already existed and that the Quote calls twenty years of neglect insufficient. It is not a lead the site refuses, and the earlier note saying so is withdrawn.

  • No revision of it in the window, and the negative is bounded to two records. war.gov’s article feed (1,500 items, Releases reaching back to 2025-01-02) returns zero hits for “electromagnetic” and one irrelevant hit for “spectrum”. The FY 2027 Program Acquisition Costs by Weapon System book returns zero for “Electromagnetic Spectrum” and “EMSO”. Neither record covers a strategy the Department published without a release, so this bounds departmental announcements and procurement, not departmental practice.

  • Executive Order 14369 sec. 2(c)(ii) (2025-12-18) directs demonstrating “spectrum leadership across space applications” and sec. 3(f) gives Commerce 120 days to consider reapportioning and sharing spectrum. That is commercial spectrum policy, not the military EMSO mission the Quote names, so it is not counted here.

Action
create
Object
electromagnetic spectrum operations recovery plan
ID
216